During a webinar this week, AMD mentioned the goal of bringing CLX memory technologies to consumer products in three to five years. The company didn’t go into detail about its plans, but it made clear this mission, which so far has only been mentioned at the corporate level.
Compute Express Link (CXL) is a new open standard developed by the CLX consortium in 2019 using PCIe 5.0 technology. The technology allows different system components to share RAM. For example, RAM will be able to use a PCIe or M.2 SSD for extra help.
Currently, SSDs and RAM use different communication protocols, which limits the connection between them. The new standard could give components such as graphics cards, RAM, CPUs, and smart I/O devices common protocols to share resources to speed up communication.
Samsung introduced the first CXL DRAM module last year, promising “terabyte-level” memory scalability. Initially, vendors will offer similar components for enterprise-level tasks such as artificial intelligence and machine learning on servers and in the cloud.
There’s a good chance we’ll learn more about CXL on November 10th, when AMD will unveil the next generation of compatible Epyc server processors. Intel Sapphire Rapids will also support CXL. Consumer devices are likely to follow suit, but the CXL requires specially prepared silicon for memory, processors, GPUs and other components.
Just because AMD was the first to mention plans for a consumer-grade CXL doesn’t mean the company will try to lead the way alone. AMD believes the industry must work together to bring CXL to the PC ecosystem. The CXL consortium includes companies such as AMD, NVIDIA, Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Cisco, Intel, Alibaba and many more.
The early mention of the technology could be a sign of the company’s efforts to promote PCIe 5 and DDR5 memory, core components of the CXL strategy. The newly released Ryzen 7000 processors require users to upgrade to the AM5 platform and use DDR5 RAM.
Source: TechSpot